Is EDSA People Power a Social Movement?

In hindsight, EDSA appeared to be an intra-elite conflict, its spirit unsustained, its promises unrealized.

In 1986, the world witnessed how the Philippines was able to oust a dictator through peaceful means after being under that regime for twenty years. More than thirty years hence, it is but important to ask if the spirit of EDSA remains alive? Is it really a social movement in the truest sense of the term? Or is it just a revolution that occurred because of the backing of the elites, the oligarchs, and even the Church? At this juncture, political psychology may be quite instructive in attempting to answer the above-posed question. It is in this context that we shall attempt to answer it using the definition of social movements provided by Bert Klandermans and Jacquelien van Stekelenburg (2013).

Klandermans and van Stekelenburg (2013) defined social movements as “collective challenges by people with common purposes and solidarity in sustained interaction with elites and authorities.” From this definition, there are three key elements that can be identified: first, social movements are collective challenges as it concerns disruptive collective direct action against elites. It is disruptive because it forces the authorities or the elites to become more attentive to the claims of the collective action. Second, social movements concern people with a common purpose and solidarity. It is expected that people who participate in collective action must be rallying behind or towards a common purpose; and that their participation is very much rooted on their collective identity and solidarity (Klandermans & van Stekelenburg, 2013). Thirdly, social movements must have sustained collective action. Klandermans and van Stekelenburg (2013) argued that the third key element is the most important of all the elements as it is the element that defines what a social movement is. It is with these key elements that we shall attempt to answer whether the EDSA Revolution is indeed a social movement.

The EDSA People Power Revolution began immediately during the aftermath of the 1986 Presidential Snap Elections called by President Ferdinand E. Marcos when issues concerning the mismatch of the count of votes by COMELEC and the election watchdog National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL). The government count had the incumbent Marcos won in a landslide and from the other side of the fence, the challenger, Corazon Aquino won the elections. This all the more brought to light the massive voter fraud that the incumbent did in order to secure his victory in this election — an election that was supposed to be easy for him (Magno, 1998). As an outcome of this, Aquino called on for “civil disobedience” in order to make the administration cower down to the will of the people (Magno, 1998). This began the series of civil disobedience in the country which ultimately culminated in the gathering of allegedly millions of people in EDSA to call for the resignation of the dictator. As it turned out, after several days of mass mobilizations, coordination within the opposition, series of defections from the Marcos Administration, and even the sudden withdrawal of support by the US in Marcos’ government, the dictator had no other recourse but to flee Malacañan and the country. Clearly, in this case, the EDSA Revolution satisfies the first key element that there are collective challenges as the Filipino people have committed themselves to a direct action against the dictatorship in the hopes of reclaiming the government and rebuild democracy in the country.

When Marcos called on for a snap election in 1986, what he had in mind is that it is going to be easy for as long as the opposition would not be able to rally behind one candidate (Magno, 1998). In this part, Marcos had a correct diagnosis of the situation. At that time, the opposition is loosely organized, scattered, and is really composed of smaller factions. However, what he thought to be a gargantuan task for the opposition, was achieved by having a unified front that fielded the widow of the assassinated Senator Benigno Aquino Jr., Cory Aquino, to run against him in the elections. That is why he turned to another strategy which is to control the counting of the votes. However, even that was not enough to secure his self in power. In fact, his views that the opposition is loosely organized, scattered, and small may be, to a certain extent, true. But they all had one purpose at that time — which is to remove him from office. This common purpose and the sense of solidarity amongst the people and the opposition have indeed forced him, among other factors, to flee and leave the country. As such, the EDSA Revolution also satisfies the second element of the definition of a social movement which says that it should have a people with a common purpose and solidarity.

It has already been established that the first two elements were present in the EDSA People Power Revolution. However, when it comes to the third key element which is the sustained collective action, may be up for debates. But I am of the standpoint that the EDSA Revolution did not have a sustained collective action for the reason that the displacement of the Marcos Dictatorship and his cronies have only been replaced by political elites who were part of the opposition and who called for the ouster of the former dictator. In short, it was simply a change of people in power but essentially having the same backdrop of elitism and oligarchs in the country. Not to mention the fact that while the mobilization of millions of people proved pivotal in the process, it is also important to note how it came to happen. Essentially, the opposition only became united to oust the dictator and reclaim the government. Once it was done, the spirit of reform waned and was short-lived. Thirty years hence, EDSA has become to some, a historical futility as the promises it was supposed to live by was not fully achieved. This has led some scholars to say that this revolution was an unfinished revolution or an incomplete revolution (Arguelles, 2016). But why is that so? This goes back to the discussion on a loosely organized opposition that is dominated by the elites. Hence, once they got into power, there were no longer sustained interaction between the movement and the government.

Within the definition of social movement, EDSA, at least in my standpoint, does not qualify as one. But this is not to discount the significant strides in the fruition of the reform promises of EDSA, if there are any. If anything, EDSA can teach us a lot of things not only on the formidable strength of the people gathered in multitude but as well as the importance of sustaining the spirit that sparked the movement to begin with. Nonetheless, the immediate promise of removing the dictator was accomplished; while the rest is up for a lot of discussion and critical reading of the country’s history since EDSA.

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*This is a graduate school essay I wrote for our Political Psychology course.

Kiko Santos is an MA in Political Economy student from the University of Asia and the Pacific. He recently completed his coursework and is now starting to write his masters thesis. His research interests revolve around institutions and institutional change.